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Cream for Fruit Tarts

A custard-like cream made from milk, cinnamon, peach leaves, bitter almonds, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cream for Fruit Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the milk with cinnamon, peach leaves, and bitter almonds.

  2. Strain the mixture and sweeten it to taste.

  3. Let it cool, then mix in the beaten eggs.

  4. Stir constantly over low heat until it thickens.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Peach + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the cream.
Eggs
Set when gently heated, thickening the cream into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the flavours of the infusions.
Bitter almonds
Contribute a distinctive nutty, almond aroma to the cream.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over low heat until it thickens. Egg proteins set at gentle temperatures, but high heat or stopping the stirring can scramble the eggs into lumps. Constant stirring over low heat keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, almond, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, almond, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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